


a stir in dead hearts

by yorkes



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: F/M, this is gonna be hella long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:31:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorkes/pseuds/yorkes
Summary: In a constant cycle of death and destruction, an original vampire and a harvest witch find their way together.(aka kol and davina's complete story, with all the gaps filled in)





	1. rebirth .5

One second Kol Mikaelson was a ghost. A ghost who in a previous life had been one of the most infamous vampires alive, and whose life years before that had been of a small village warlock.

The next second, all that magic was back. But it was magic that wasn’t his.

 

It was clear Kol was no longer on the other side. Stagnant air moved against his skin and went in and out of him as fast as his heavy breathing could manage Light flicked against his eyelids, and those flickers were foreign to the life he had become accustomed to. The other side was dark and grey and still… the only light was barely there and didn’t register enough life to dare flicker.

Then he opened his eyes, and he saw a familiar sight. He was in a mausoleum, but there was no dust and no bodies to indicate that. The architecture instead housed an array of bottles, containers, and books that cluttered up tables.

At the end of one of those tables was an unfamiliar sight. By the time he registered her presence, she was walking over to him. The woman in front of him was better defined as a girl, no older than eighteen, and with cold blue eyes did not belong on her young face.

“Kol?” she inquired, reaching from him. He shuddered backwards, realizing from the hard stone underneath him that he was on a coffin platform. The girl shook her head with a tut, but no apparent emotion flickered across her face.

“Welcome back,” she continued, no cheer in her voice and no light in her borrowed eyes. Even disoriented and reeling from whatever had just happened to him, it was clear that the person in front of him had done whatever she had done out of calculation. A calculation, that from the appraisal she gave him, worked out. “It’s wonderful to see you again, son.”

Even in his disoriented state, Kol managed to freeze. His breaths slowed, his shoulder stilled, and he allowed himself to really look at the woman in front of him. It was obvious of course; if nothing else could give her away that look could. A smile emerged on her face when she could see Kol had connected it all, but it disappeared quickly. It went away as soon as a sudden chill. That would be the end of the pleasantries.

Esther Mikaelson had once been a loving mother, and Kol remembered that she’d tried the pretense of it recently, but it seemed she was going for a different approach now.

“I’ve brought Finn back as well,” she announced, moving back towards the table she stood at. 

“You resurrected me?” Kol managed out, speaking for the first time, and that was when he first knew.

“Not precisely,” Esther answered, as if him voicing his question didn’t already do that. She grabbed a decaying hand mirror from the pile of materials and brought it to him. This happened in the span of a few seconds, but from her eery swiftness and his thoughts racing it felt like hours.

Even with the mirror broken, glass fragments smashed in the lower corner, Kol saw the owner of the voice that had just come from his mouth. He felt his eyes widen as the ones in the mirror did, and saw the boy mirror him as he swallowed hard.

“I couldn’t recover your previous body, but that wasn’t necessary,” Esther started, Kol still stuck looking at the expression staring back at him. He knew, knew he was somehow now that frightened looking boy, but it would not register. “Our family has strayed so far over the years, but we can fix that. We were a family once, and we can be again. We have to rid your siblings of their vampirism like you and Finn have.”

Alien face forgotten, Kol looked at himself in the mirror as she spoke and _felt_ her words. Felt the weight as he realized what was truly different about him. The hunger and predation that factored into his every breath was gone. In its place was a low current of power that pulsed under his skin. It had been so long that the world barely registered but it did; there was magic where bloodlust had been. He must have spent minutes in silence as this sunk in, and his mother said nothing until he looked up, eyes wide.

“I can imagine how you feel,” Esther said, her posture hinting she thought highly of what she was about to say.

“And how is that?” he bit out. Even in a state of shock and confusion, he knew to feel resentment towards his mother; any nurturing tendencies she had were long gone along with any empathy. And he felt that resentment, strongly, as he looked at that young girl and saw the shadow of his mother within her.

“You were a monster, and now you are not,” Esther said simply. Kol’s widened eyes narrowed.

“And who am I?” He motioned to himself, and noticed long arms gesturing in the lower tier of his sight. “Who is this?” he rephrased, poison laced in the voice that erupted from him. The pointed finger he controlled went straight into chest.

Esther’s lips were pursed, unhappy.

“You are now in the body of a warlock named Kaleb,” she explained. “Kaleb had no real attachments and has no association with the New Orleans coven other than his blood. We’re lucky he only just came back in town.”

New Orleans. If Esther hadn’t made it clear this was a family affair, he wouldn’t known then. It always came back to New Orleans.

In the beginning, after the Gilberts killed him, Kol watched his family. He saw them mourn for a day before moving on. He saw them move on from Mystic Falls, and that’s when he cut himself off. There was point watching over a family who couldn’t bother mentioning his name.

“And that’s it? You chose the first loner you saw.” Underneath a lot of emotions, Kol felt a tug of sympathy for the guy from his mother’s descriptor. Kol himself could have fit it in more or less words.

“Kaleb was ideal,” Esther stated, “for more reasons than you can understand right now.”

“Make me understand,” Kol demanded, wishing his mother could hear his frustration in his own voice. Kol’s bloodlust was gone, but he’d grown so accustomed that anger that it flooded back. “What do you want me to do? Be apart of a family that does not want to be in the same room let alone city?”

“I want my family back together, the way they used to be.”

“It’s been a millenia,” Kol reminded her, and that’s when the pain hit him.

The heat engulfed him with a million pricks, like the fire that had burned him alive. The memory was seared into his mind, and the sensation pained him so many levels deeper than the physical. When he looked for flames though, there were none. In a second, the pain was gone, and Kol was left visibly shaken.

“I want my family back together,” Esther declared, “and that includes you, Kol. But that does not mean I will tolerate your behavior. You will do will as a say, or that plan will move on without you.”

The flames were a phantom on his skin as he swallowed his pride.

“Make me understand,” he repeated, tone as soft as he could manage to make his intention clear. There was an edge he was certain Esther heard, but it was enough for her. Without hesitation, she started the story Kol had tuned out of for the past months.

 

* * *

 

Kol walked around in New Orleans that night in a daze. He’d been awoken at sunrise, but it was edging past sunset when Esther finally released him. He got the full story of what he missed and then some, also hearing his mother’s pleas for family unification. He scoffed at her delusions, but was even more incredulous at Finn.

Kol earned his second magical scolding of the day because of comments he made when Finn joined them in cemetery.

Lightly touching his neck where an actual burn had formed, he found himself walking up and down streets that looked and felt the same. The only difference was the tension; the tension between the supernaturals he saw, between the obvious tourists and the locals, and underneath it all the tension his family has graced the city with.

Kol knew he had a flair for the theatrical, but he was amazed at his family’s capacity for drama. They had brought their wave of turmoil from Mystic Falls to New Orleans without blinking an eye. Sure, Kol had a penchant for murder and mayhem, but his mayhem rarely had the heavy implications Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah’s had.

To be fair, New Orleans did it to itself too, according to his mother’s story. The witches had gotten themselves into a mess that they had sloppily cleaned up and the werewolves were chomping at the bit to make another move. At the end of it all, it all came back to a Mikaelson though. Or in special circumstances, those who had been overly acquainted with his family.

As he walked through Quarter, he let that tension leach onto him.

Every Mikaelson was fighting for a sort of family. His siblings were fighting for always and forever with their newest addition and Esther wanted to end their forever in the name of family.

Kol wasn’t sure he wanted any of it.

He had called New Orleans home once, but walking through it that night he realized it had never been his. The Crescent City was his family’s, and a few times over the years they had just allowed him to inhabit it.

This in mind, he walked through the Quarter in a new light despite the darkness. He walked past the throng of tourists, all smiling in their ignorance. They saw this city as a playground, but it was a mousetrap.

These thoughts and more were running through his head as he paced the city, but there was sudden silence when he turned the corner and found himself across the street from a church. The church was hardly impressive, but it was the girl beneath it that made him pause his step.

As far as he’d wandered, there were only a handful people on the street let alone around the church, but even alone she stood out from the rest.

The streetlamps glowed as she walked towards the doors of the church, her shoulders heavy but pushed back. Despite her dim surroundings, ones that should have signaled danger to anyone late at night, especially someone as small as she was, she took her time moving.

Kol couldn’t look away. It was like he could feel the heaviness of her steps from twenty feet away.

That was when she made a pause herself, leaning up against a dead rose bush. Her head swiveled around her a moment, but Kol must’ve blended in with the dark of night, because she deemed herself clear.

Her hand moved against the green and rotted red and a soft haze fell over the bush for several infinite moments. When her hand fell, the rose bush was vibrant and alive. Kol hadn’t even realize he was holding his breath until he released it at the sight of that magic reviving those flowers.

It had been centuries since Kol had acknowledged such a simple act of magic. The only magic he’d known in forever was the type he asked his witches to do, and there was rarely a simple undertone to those. There was always a story, always a long game.

All that anger rushed away in an instant and for a moment there was calm.

When he let his gaze wander from the roses they brought him back to the girl. His breath caught again, but this time he was fully aware of himself as he stilled. Kol never thought much about smiles, his own was described as a grin of mischief and sardonic humor, but that changed immediately when he saw hers.

Spread onto her face was the most genuine expression of happiness Kol had ever seen, and it was over a rose bush. That smile radiated into her her whole being. As if she were some kind of beacon, he itched to get closer, but he couldn’t bring himself move.

Something had cracked deep within him, and a wave of emotion flooded his senses. In moments, everything he hadn’t felt came flooding back. There was pain and loss, but there also an overwhelming amount of joy and content in those tides.

Something hadn’t just cracked, it had aligned.

Standing across from that church, across from that girl and her roses, Kol Mikaelson felt more alive than he had in a millennia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally making my multichapter fic! I'm planning on retelling everything in Kolvina's story, from start to finish and every little detail in between, so this is gonna quite the task but I'm excited to take it on. A lot of this is gonna be meta heavy but all based on information we get from the series! Let me know your thoughts, and expect pretty regular updates.


	2. rebirth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so that took a bit of time! I'm sorry. Summer got the best of me, and I know the start of college will too, but I was hit with inspiration with The Originals ending so I wanted to write some more on this. Please let me know your thoughts, all comments are appreciated! I'm putting a lot of work into this in terms of trying to blend meta with canon and I would love to know your thoughts. I do intend on keeping this going because it's my only way to show appreciation to my most loved relationship, and it keeps me writing! I'm majoring in English, and had I told myself to stop writing fanfic and focus on fiction a few months ago, but at the end of the day any writing I'm doing now will just give me practice so I'm gonna keep on with the fic! Sorry, that was probably irrelevant information, but just to give you extra background on why it took me so long to update a chapter I had half written three months ago.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

It has been several lifetimes since he’d done magic himself, but Kol caught up quickly.

“Why did you bring me back as a warlock?” he asked, a couple days after he awoke. Sure, it was what he had been all those years ago, but he could’ve been brought back as a mortal too. He lazily kept a flame steady, his attention on it for entertainment not necessity. The deep blue blue licked up and away from the deep orange.

Esther didn’t let him wander much, insisting he had to stay in and control his magic, and even in little moments of magic like this Kol almost didn’t mind. The rush of magic, no matter how big or small, was a rush nonetheless, and it kept his mind off of his mother as well as could. 

The inevitable loomed, though. Nothing with her was ever easy or without an ulterior motive. 

“I needed you to do magic,” Esther said tightly, annoyed with Kol’s pestering. 

“Well, I figured out that much,” he said, the flame cutting out as he turned his attention away. “Is there a certain spell I have to complete?” Immediately she laughed, and there was no way that borderline manic laughter was native to that body. 

“Anything you could complete I could as well,” she gave, “I have a harvest’s witches power and you… well, you have power but it’s nothing compared to your brother or I.”

Kol mouth was in a firm line, his face expressionless, but inside he felt a blow. Suddenly his excitement over small acts of magic felt silly. Esther wouldn’t dare give him the power to destroy her. He thought back to when she had burned him that first day; it was all to keep him in line.

That still begged a question though. Why give him any magic at all? So he asked her that, careful not to let his bitterness register in his voice. 

“I need you to get information for me, and the girl will be a lot more open with a warlock,” she finally explained. 

“A girl?” he repeated, voice incredulous. His mother made him meticulously rein in his magic the past forty eight hours for a girl. It was no better than using magic for a parlor trick. 

“A very powerful girl,” Esther corrected, eyes flashing with warning, “Davina Claire to be exact.” Kol recognized the name from his recent learning of current New Orleans events, but couldn’t place it. “The harvest girl who hid for months and then left her coven.”

“You want me to flirt with a teenager for information,” he rephrased, pointed look.

“Catch her with honey, catch her with vinegar, I don’t care either way,” Esther said with a shrug, “you just need to get any information you can from her.” Kol’s eyebrows rose. 

“I thought she was out of the picture?” Kol thought aloud. Davina left her coven after all they’d done to her, and he thought Esther had let her go, or the story had went.

“She’s hiding something,” Esther simply said. 

“How am I supposed to meet her?”Again, Esther shrugged at him, but shrug started to feel like the wrong word for Kol to attribute to her. Her shrug was slight, meticulous, and definite. There was nothing indecisive about it.

“I have a picture of her from the harvest, before it all fell apart,” Esther offered, looking over to her table like a hawk looked for its prey. “Here.”

Kol hadn’t gotten the best look at her before, but there no was question who the picture was of. Smiling before him, with the brightest grin in a white dress, was the girl from a few nights before. Her smile was exactly the same - full of hope and promise. Kol wanted to smile despite the situation, despite his mother being right there, but he didn’t.

Esther had said it was taken from before the harvest. That meant the girl in that photo had just been chosen for the greatest honor she thought she could receive, and her excitement was clear. What she hadn’t realized was what that meant - that her life would be taken that night for the betterment of the coven. When his mother had explained the story, she had chastised Davina for her selfishness. The harvest intended to have its sacrifices resurrected, and Esther suggested Davina should have believed in that despite not even knowing. He’d agreed, it made sense to him at the time. 

But looking at the innocence that photograph captured, Kol rethought the whole story. Death, even with the knowledge of resurrection, was the worst thing you could inflict on anyone. She had every right to be scared and to be angry. That coven had ripped away her youth with that ceremony, and they hadn’t even given her a warning. The girl in the photograph was different than the one he had just seen, and he didn’t even know either of them. The girl in white was full of life, of light, and saw hope on the horizon. The girl he had seen days prior was still full of life, of light, but that hope he saw was just a glimmer of what it had been.

“I’m supposed to manipulate her?” Kol struggled to keep his voice neutral. He shouldn’t care, he wouldn’t have cared before. If anything, his only qualm should have been doing it for his mother, but that was second to the churning in his stomach. 

“Precisely,” Esther answered, no beating around the bush. “Sooner rather than later, too.”

He nodded, putting himself in motion quickly. Kol needed time to think, time to process, and that couldn’t happen around Esther. 

“I’m on it,” he said simply. It was enough to please Esther for then.

 

* * *

  
  


“Here we go, Davina.”

Joe, the owner of Second Life Vinyl, handed over Davina’s newly sheathed purchase. She’d been a frequent visitor of the place in her few months of freedom from the coven, but for reasons she had trouble fully explaining.

“Now sometime you’re gonna have to give me the lowdown on why you’re so hooked on ancient Icelandic folk music,” Joe said, and Davina just let out a laugh and a smile.

“It’s for someone else,” she assured him. 

“I sure hope so!”

Davina appreciated light natured ventures out into the world, like music shopping, even if there were constant reminders of the situation she’d gotten herself into. It was going to be worth it, to finally get rid of Klaus, but there were many obstacles in the way of that. Stealing a glance at the folk music she’d just purchased, and she would unfortunately hear as some point, she reminded herself of that - it was worth it. Bringing Mikael back from the dead was worth it. 

It was hard to think of herself as a seventeen year old sometimes. 

Suddenly, as if some higher power that actually liked her (so not the ancestors) was listening in on her thoughts, a very cute boy showed up. Tall and handsome was already walking out the door in front of her, and she knew he must’ve only been in there shortly because he would’ve warranted notice.

He looked back, and for a moment they locked eyes. That was enough for any girl to remember she was in fact, in spite of her circumstances, still a teenage girl. So Davina smiled, like any teenage girl would do in the presence of a cute teenage boy. There was an upward tug of his lips garnered, but just as fast as he appeared, he was gone.

What replaced his welcome presence was a very unwelcome one. Davina quickly morphed her grin into a frown.

So much for pretending she was normal.

“Hey there cutie,” Oliver 

“Don’t call me that,” Davine bit out.

“So I heard that you ditched your coven,” he said, as if this wasn’t common knowledge and borderline old gossip. “That’s too bad. That other Harvest girl, Cassie, she has been super helpful to all us wolves.”

“She’s making you moonlight rings, Oliver,” Davina pointed out, her breath already tight with annoyance. “I wouldn’t call that helpful, I’d call that an alliance.” 

It was hard to believe that just months ago she’d been so desperate for attention and validation she had wanted to dance and flirt with him. For a split second, at that Mikaelson party, she had let herself think it was her fairytale moment, and Oliver was going to be her roguish prince. That evaporated almost instantaneously even then, but it reminded Davina of how far she had come - how fast she had grown up. 

“Call it what you want,” he said with a shrug, continuing on with his nonsense about Cassie for a moment before he leaned in. “Look, I’d take off if I were you. Things are about to get a little ugly in here.”

Davina’s green eyes narrowed instantly at that. A year ago, she might have considered the warning chivalrous. Yet another sign of the realities she had faced, her reaction now was fear for everyone in the space.

“Store’s closed, y’all. Get out, now.” As Oliver cleared out the room, Davina attempted to assess the situation. Things were moving much too quickly for that though.

“Hey. What are you doing?” the shopkeeper pressed. The store was busy, especially for a weekday. If they weren’t in such a battletorn city, his concern could’ve been easily written off as a business owner’s concern.

“It’s Joe Dalton, right?’ To Oliver’s question, Joe nodded. “You see I’ve been studying up on this store. It’s been a staple of the Quarter for 90 years. It’s run by you, your daddy, and then his daddy before him?”

“That’s right.” Joe was still.

“Yeah, you see the thing is Joe… there just aren’t that many photos of people in your family,” Oliver was getting to a point, both Davina and Joe knew it before the photo was dropped onto the table. The werewolf was said something else, probably something incriminating according to him, but Davina didn’t care to hear it. 

“Oliver, no.” At first, there wasn’t enough time for Davina to do anything. Joe ran, and quickly it was clear reinforcements had been called in. “Stop! Stop. Stop it!”

When words are not enough, action becomes necessary. 

She quickly send out a force of magic to keep the werewolves down, get them off of the vampire they didn’t allow in the Quarter anymore. 

“Joe, get out of here,” she plead, knowing she didn’t want to be at the scene long herself. Thankfully, he obliged, and he was gone with the speed he tried to conceal. Her heart slowed it’s racing when he was out of sight, but it forced her to acknowledge the angry wolves whose plans she had thwarted. 

After leveling a stare at all of them, but mainly Oliver, she dealt one more magical blow.

“Do not even think about trying to follow me,” she hissed. Even without Joe’s vamp speed, she was moved twice the mortal rate on her way out.

 

* * *

 

 

The plan had not gone very well. 

Kol had done a tracking spell, but it kept slipping due to some kind of block Davina had up. So when he was able to pinpoint her location only minutes away in the Quarter, he threw on his jacket and got moving. It was during his five minute walk he tried to form an approach to meeting her, but he realized it was difficult not entirely knowing where she was.

He had plenty of experience with high energy, but he didn’t appreciate the nerves he was feeling. With vampirism it was pretty easy to live life in the present, because the worst repercussions were decades of daggering at most. Up until the end, at least. Now, one bad move and his very fragile mortality was at stake, and in the metaphysical sense of the word.

When he arrived to her location, he was able to formulate a little something better. 

Davina Claire was in a record store. That meant small talk over music was acceptable, even encouraged. His plan was make some small talk, disappear, and then just happen to run into her later and have a built in conversation. He expected - he hoped almost, after all the shit he’d heard going on in town - that she’d be suspicious of him. A couple casual encounters would seem fateful almost, or so he hoped.

Kol was never, ever, a planner. Not even before vampires existed. Esther should’ve remembered that before sending him out on a nefarious mission, but forgetting Kol was a Mikaelson family pastime.

The first roadblock came when he saw Davina was already at the counter, chatting with the guy at the cashier while she paid. That meant casual mutual perusing of music was out of the picture. 

He stopped by the first box of vinyls he saw and started to paw through them, keeping his eyes down but his ears open. Nothing of importance was happening, just a friendly conversation. It was clear she was a regular here, but unless the vinyl store was a front for something that wasn’t the kind of information his mother wanted. The cashier made a comment about her buying lots of Icelandic folk music, which Kol thought was odd, but again nothing too relevant. 

When they were wrapping up, Kol decided to as well. He tried to make himself look natural as pivoted to leave the moment Davina did as well, but no one was paying him any attention. 

Except for when she noticed him. And well, he could tell she noticed him. 

Kol tried to move slowly as he left, because Davina had latched her eyes onto his. She was bold, he thought, but everyone already knew that. He didn’t mind that boldness as she let a smile form, clearly for him. 

He’d already reached the door after only seconds, and tore his gaze away. He gave her one last glance before he had no choice but to exit the shop. A man was going in right after him, and he heard him start talking right as the door closed. 

Kol waited a moment, waited for Davina to walk out too, but after a minute of waiting it was clear she wasn’t coming out yet. He started down the street, calling it a day and deciding to come up with a better idea later, when he noticed a group of men walking past him. After further observation, done quickly over his shoulder, he decided it was safe to call them a pack of men. And they were waiting outside the vinyl shop.

There was a sudden commotion, and the cashier bolted in such a way he had to be a vampire, and shortly after Davina was leaving without so much as a glance over her shoulder. Vampire, witch, and werewolf all in one place with the current state of the city had to be worth something.

Kol sighed, knowing if he’d been in there longer he might’ve heard something for Esther. 

For a very partial plan, partial success was about the best he should have hoped for. He didn’t get much, but he did have his first official encounter with Davina. 

He was trying hard not to think back to the first time he saw her, before he even knew she was his assignment. Epiphany felt like a ridiculous word to use, but he realized the weight of his life in that moment, so he figured he could apply a rather noun to the moment. Life affirming moments like that, though that was only the second he’d ever experienced in a vast lifetime, were hard to dismiss.

Even so, easier said than done when that damn smile keeps popping up. In her photo and now in person too. 

Kol couldn’t believe himself. She was a pretty girl, beautiful even. Out of everything that could distract him, he was getting caught up on her smile. He’d always found other things more enticing, and when it got down to it the fresh blood had always been the most attractive to him. He knew vampirism affected him, but mortality wasn’t about to cause him to become a romantic. He’d been the only one of his siblings to be spared from that trait.

 

* * *

 

 

Even though she put medicine on the bites from Mikael, there was still a dull pain on her right forearm for a few hours after she let him feed. It was the only way she could keep him fed, but she hated doing it. The bracelet she’d made was firmly, both structurally and magically, on her wrist. Despite that, she always a small fear that of it breaking, and in return the hold she had over Mikael breaking. If that happened, both she, Klaus, and all of her friends would be dead. Though the whole point of this was for Klaus to die, Davina first needed to break the sire link. 

She pushed away the pain, eager to check up on Joe. Not that deep down, it was obvious he would be gone either of his own free will or someone else’s, but she had to check. 

Second Life Vinyl, for the first time in almost a century was all closed up during the day. It made her sick to her stomach to know a supernatural couldn’t live in peace, when they were doing nothing to cause trouble. Davina had gotten herself in  _ all _ sorts of trouble for the past year. This, she knew well. At this point there didn’t seem to be an end in sight. 

The red ‘closed’ sign signaled more than any tourist could ever know. 

“Well, this sucks,” a voice said from behind Davina. “No trades today.” To her surprise, the boy from the day before. “And worse for you, of course. Guy had the market cornered on the ancient Icelandic folk scene.”

Davina let out a small, but genuine, laugh. She was too quickly caught up in the moment to think about why he had been listening in on her conversation with Joe. 

“Those weren’t for me,” she corrected, the laugh morphing into a soft smile.

There was a pause. It seemed to her that the boy seemed to be thinking, and in fact he was. It took a great deal of effort to let out the next two words.

“I’m Kaleb.” 

“Davina.”

“Wow, cool name,” he commented. “Terrible taste in music,” he quickly added on. “You obviously need me.”

Even caught in the moment, Davina took notice of the look in his eyes. It stalled her for a second, forcing her gaze down, but she dismissed her notice as unnecessary suspicious. When she looked up, she saw a perfectly normal looking guy. He was cute too. 

Waiting for her at home was a vengeful vampire she didn’t know how to deal with. So, she allowed herself this fleeting moment of normalcy. She didn’t even flinch when he asked for her number.

When Kol made his way back to the cemetery, Finn was with Esther. His older brother was complaining, not unusual, but his topic today struck a chord with Kol. He hovered outside the entrance, listening in.

“Humans are weak. Their bodies are so strange. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be this vulnerable.” 

“At least you’re not stuck in the body of a teenager,” Esther responded, and Kol decided it was time to make an entrance. 

“Well, I love my body, mother,” he said, purely to be spiteful. He was happy he was a witch, and he was vain enough to appreciate he stood at the same height, but it hard to be pleased about basically possessing a body. “I’m pretty sure Davina Claire does too.” 

“Don’t be puerile,” she scolded, but barely giving his comment notice. Up until that point, Esther had no idea Kol had made contact with Davina. Esther acted as if she didn’t care progress was being made on his end. “We have work to do,” she continued on instead, “your brothers did me a favor by killing Francesca. Now, I will control the witches and the werewolves…” 

She rattled on. Kol paid his mother little attention. Her notions of family might have resonated with him if he didn’t know her too well, and if he didn’t know his own siblings. It all just felt like sinister plan that was going to take an entire city down in the crossfires.

Mayhem, a little bit of murder, was fine by Kol if it was in pursuit of a noble purpose. Fun being the primary reason, and attention seeking begrudgingly, but admittedly, the other. In another life,  _ his _ old life, he might have found some fun in toying with his family. Just a few years prior, he could’ve betrayed Esther and gone off on his own after the amusement ran out.

A finite death had changed that. A mortal body changed that even more.

Shortly put, he was terrified of dying. For that reason, and for that reason alone, he’d play along with Esther. At least, for the time being.


End file.
